Markus Klems

Markus Klems is a research assistant at Germany-based FZI Research Center for Information Technology. His main areas of interests are cloud computing, grids, distributed programming and agile Web development - the technological point of view as well as business models. He blogs at http://markusklems.wordpress.com/.

Markus Klems' Blog
In an attempt to better understand the nature of cloud computing I tried to
draw a classification of some companies and applications that spawn in the
cloud.
Three different cloud computing levels
Infrastructure
The heart of the cloud is what some people call Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS). This is as near to bare metal as we can get: pure storage and compute
capacity. With virtualization techniques it is packaged into small units that
are delivered like water or electricity (notion of utility computing).
Infrastructure as a Service
Platforms
The next layer... (more)

Markus Klems' Blog
What are the benefits from using Cloud Computing services or platforms? Cost
efficiency, shorter innovation cycles and scalability are frequently
mentioned promises. However, the value proposition of Cloud Computing
obviously depends on the corresponding business scenario. You cannot properly
value the benefits from using Cloud Computing services unless you know and
understand the relevant parameters of your project.
The question is: which are criteria that make Cloud Computing services a
valuable infrastructure for certain projects? Which are criteria that have ... (more)

Markus Klems' Blog
Cloud Computing is not so much about SaaS (people already use Webmail, Google
Docs, Salesforce, etc.). It is about virtualized hardware resources provided
for developers as services on a pay-per-use basis. I do not understand how
people can seriously argue they won’t go into the Cloud. They are already
there.
A recent article about Cloud Computing in the German weekly ZEIT made me
think of a blog post of mine on data security in the cloud. Although the
article is quite positive and describes Cloud Computing as a disruptive
technology that will have a huge impa... (more)

Marcus Klems' Blog
Is a machine-centric Cloud Computing environment more suitable for delivering
single-tenant instances?
Steve Bobrowski wrote an interesting whitepaper about the Force.com
Multitenant Architecture. He describes multitenancy as a design approach to
improve the manageability of SaaS applications and metadata-driven
architecture as the choice to implement multitenancy. Steve writes that IaaS
as a machine-centric Cloud Computing environment is more suitable for
delivering single-tenant instances (compared to a “true” multitenant PaaS
solution). This is an interesti... (more)